Self-talk your way out of the crapola

It was a morning like any other. The sky hadn't yet made up its mind. The anchorette rose early, breakfasted, dressed carefully - she'd laid out her business casual the night before - and went to work. She took herself seriously, resenting the characterisation of her job as aesthetic labour. She'd heard that term used, just as she'd heard references to her as an autocutie or a coathanger or a fashionista. But the worst epithet to date had been brain candy.

Her coping strategy was to put such remarks down to envy. After all, she wasn't off the street. She had a degree in communications and she had worked hard as a reporter before landing on her feet in TV. It had been a hard haul to arrive at anchor. OK, she looked good. That was part of it, but not as big a part as people made out. In any case, she'd resolved not to let the envy get to her. After all, she had bigger problems than office gossip. Like her recently diagnosed aspendicitis. But she was getting help for that - it had been exactly 17 days since she had cut up her credit cards and she was, well, coping.

Pity there wasn't a patch for it, though. Going straight home after work helped, and so did avoiding retail therapy outlets on the weekend. That's where the gym came in. Exercise was great for the quarter-life crisis she was having. She knew the anchor job was not forever and she had already planned her exit strategy. Meanwhile, news reading was what she did.

Not that the news was a happy place to be most days. More Afro-pessimism, more asylum shopping stories, more ravings of the belligerati, more talk of rogue states and road maps.

Today was not likely to be much different. She probably would not want to fix dinner for herself. She planned to stop off for some chew-and-spew, follow that with some appointment TV, or maybe a dramedy. She had moved the TV out of her bedroom as part of her new sleep hygiene, which also had her in bed by 10, and having no coffee from 3pm. That part was tough because she really liked her coffee.

Yes, she knew her life was largely crapola. But she wasn't ready to get off the treadmill. She suffered, she'd been told, from an oversupply of emotional correctness, which kept her well and truly part of the followship. She suspected she'd been overparted, which, she supposed, was better than uptitling, but she dreaded the consequences of losing the job. She'd be back at the mercy of the postcode discrimination that had dogged her for years while she was in share accommodation and living off freelance reporter wages, which, let's face it, don't stretch very far.

Like everyone at the network, she feared the flow-on from a regime change, but what was the point of buying into free-floating anxiety? She would deal with it if-and-when. It might mean some customer-facing in a retail job. Worst-case scenario, she'd join the boomerang generation and go back to living with her folks.

She told herself, monitoring her self-talk, it was important to be optimistic. She'd work on the exercises in emotional intelligence that her life coach gave her to help her stay focused on her goals. She'd promised herself she'd never revisit status zero - that time she had experienced straight after school.

Maybe, by the end of the year, she'd be able to take time off without succumbing to leisure sickness, like last year and the year before. Yes, she sighed, it was important to be optimistic. ruth@laraconsultancy.com